News of the day from across the nation, Feb. 9

Chronicle News Services

Published 3:52 pm, Wednesday, February 8, 2017

1Kennedy office run: Chris Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, said Wednesday that he will run for Illinois governor in 2018, bringing the instant name recognition of his family’s political legacy to what’s expected to be a sharply contested race to unseat Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. Kennedy, 53, is the eighth of 11 children of Ethel Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, a former U.S. attorney general who represented New York in the Senate and was assassinated in 1968 while seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Chris Kennedy founded Top Box Foods, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable, healthy food to Chicago neighborhoods.

2Transgender scout: A New Jersey boy has become the first openly transgender member of the Boy Scouts one week after the Boy Scouts of America changed its policy to allow transgender children to join the organization. “I am accepted,” Joe Maldonado said Tuesday night following the organization’s decision to allow transgender Scouts. Maldonado, 9, was banned from a Cub Scout group in Secaucus. The Boy Scouts changed its policy of referring to the gender on birth certificates to determine eligibility last week after Maldonado’s story gained national attention. Previously, the Boy Scouts overturned bans against gay Scouts and Scouting leaders.

3Prison release: Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was released Wednesday from a federal prison in Louisiana where he was serving a six-year sentence for bribery and obstruction of justice, a family spokesman said. He then flew home on a commercial flight to Birmingham to serve the remainder of his sentence on house arrest. A federal jury in 2006 convicted Siegelman,70, on charges that he sold a seat on a state regulatory board in exchange for $500,000 in donations to Siegelman’s signature political issue — his 1999 campaign to establish a state lottery. He was convicted on a separate obstruction of justice charge that he tried to hide money he received from a lobbyist. Siegelman for decades was a dominating figure in Alabama politics, holding the offices of secretary of state, attorney general, lieutenant governor and governor.

4Ex-priest indicted: A former Roman Catholic priest who spent more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison for raping an altar boy has been indicted in Maine on 29 counts of sexual misconduct dating to the 1980s. York County District Attorney Kathryn Slattery said some counts against 74-year-old Ronald Paquin involve a child under 14. Paquin, freed in 2015, was a central figure in the Boston archdiocese’s sex abuse scandal. He was later defrocked by the Vatican.

5 Stillborn baby: A young woman who gave birth to a stillborn child and disposed of its body in a dumpster is headed to jail in Virginia. Media outlets report 25-year-old Katherine Dellis of Rocky Mount was sentenced this week to five months in jail.